In rural areas of the developing world, many people remain mired in poverty and dependent upon small subsistence level farms as their only source of food. These subsistence farmers, reliant on their harvests to feed themselves and their families, lack the agricultural equipment needed to increase the productivity of their harvests. The low productivity of these subsistence farms means that farmers are unable to grow any surplus of food that could be sold at the market place, preventing these farmers from earning the income that would allow them to invest in their farms, purchase healthcare and education for their families, and progress out of poverty towards the middle class.
Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Asia, presents a vivid illustration of the plight faced by Third World subsistence farmers. Plagued by decades of conflict, nearly eighty percent of Cambodia's population lives in rural areas, with many relying on farming as their only source of food and income. Rice is the primary crop of Cambodian farmers. To ensure the optimal spacing of the rice plants and to facilitate weeding and the application of fertilizers, herbicides, or insecticide, rice is grown in rows, which results in greater crop yields for the rice than growing the crop in other patterns.
In a traditional Cambodian method for rice-farming, farmers plant rice in one or more smaller plots for a certain period of time, and then transplant the seedlings by hand to the main field for maturation once those seedlings have grown to a sufficient size. In contrast, in more developed countries where farming is more machine-intensive and industrialized, automated equipment capable of mechanically planting and cultivating rice in rows is commonly utilized, replacing the traditional hand-transplantation techniques used by rural farmers in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries.
Unlike the more industrialized farming sectors in other nations, the relative lack of income and resources of many Cambodian farmers means that automated equipment for planting rice crops is largely unavailable to these farmers. This means that these farmers must employ human labor to plant their rice crops using the traditional Cambodian method. This method is very labor intensive, as the traditional method can take up to fifty days for a single farmer to plant a one-hectare field of rice. And recent years have seen a migration of working aged men and women from rural Cambodian farming communities to more urban locales in order to work in garment factories or construction in Cambodia or in other Southeast Asian countries.
This migration has reduced the amount of labor available to these Cambodian communities, forcing farmers in Cambodia to either plant fewer fields of rice or use less efficient methods for planting rice (such as spreading rice seeds by hand on dry ground, which results in sub-optimal arrangements of the rice crop and many of the seeds being eaten by animals or failing to sprout). The resulting reduction in crop yields negatively impacts Cambodian farm families, who already struggle to satisfy their nutritional needs (and to meet their needs for adequate healthcare and education).
To solve these challenges faced by Cambodian farmers, as well as farmers in other Southeast Asian rice-planting countries, there remains a need for the development and distribution of devices and techniques that would enable these farmers to plant rows of crops while reducing the time, labor, costs, and overall resources needed to plant their crops. Such devices and techniques would allow these farmers to employ their labor more efficiently and waste less seed, water, and fertilizer in the planting process, not only improving crop yields, but also providing an opportunity for these farmers to allocate more of their time elsewhere (for example, obtaining education). These devices and techniques would ultimately aid in raising the income of farmers, helping to lift them and their families out of poverty.
While devices for planting rice seeds exist, no known existing designs are sufficient to meet the above-mentioned needs of farmers in Cambodia or other Southeast Asian nations. While sophisticated devices for planting rice seed exist and are used in more industrialized nations, such mechanized devices are too expensive and complex for small-scale farmers. Furthermore, for example, Cambodia's manufacturing sector is relatively less-developed in comparison with some neighboring countries. Therefore, for a device for planting rice to be truly accessible to Cambodian farmers (or rural farmers in other Southeast Asian countries) at a reasonable cost, that device must be capable of being manufactured locally, using readily available materials and manufacturing processes.
Simpler devices, such as broadcast planters that use air power to spray seeds, are inefficient, blowing rice seed in uncontrolled patterns and lacking the concentrated velocity necessary to embed the rice seed into the soil. If not embedded into the soil, the rice remains on top of the soil, and is readily eaten by animals or blown away by wind or washed away by rains. Drum seeders, which are rolled on the ground and drop seed out of holes, also cannot embed the dropped rice seeds into soil, similarly leaving the rice susceptible to being eaten or swept away by wind or rain. Other attempts at developing a suitable device for planting rice seeds suffered from repeated jamming problems, causing these attempts to fail.
As discussed above, existing devices and techniques for planting rice seed suffer from deficiencies: failing to effectively plant rice seed in rows without unduly wasting seed, labor, and other resources. As a result, there remains a need for devices and techniques for planting rice seeds that do not suffer from the drawbacks shared by these existing devices and methods.